Recently, I've been seeing the occasional bunch of pirates who demand tribute, but ignore it when given, and press their attack instead. Tonight though, there have been oodles of them - no matter how much cargo I drop, they press their attack ruthlessly. Anyone else seeing this behaviour?

There have been no changes related to that part of AI in months. In any case, I just run a quick test with this and twice I was ordered to drop 8 barrels. In both cases the attack stopped as expected. Maybe a recently installed OXP is causing what you are seeing?

I didn't mind the occasional bunch of killer pirates, as it kinda fits... but last night was crazy!

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Maybe a recently installed OXP is causing what you are seeing?

That's what I was wondering, but the only recent addition is spara's Spicy Hermits, which seems an unlikely culprit... spara?

If you would have been close to a pirate hermit, there might have been one possible explanation.

If you have "trader" in your reputation array, then the pirates might politely ask you to spread your wealth with them. If on top of that you have "hunter" in your reputation array, the hermit might order the ships in it's group to relentlessly attack you. To my understanding the reputation works so that AI ships randomly select one of your roles and act on that assumption.

There shouldn't be any 'hunter' in my rep - I only hit pirates if they attack me, and I don't hunt them down (or help the cops).
These are often, but not exclusively, full pirate squadrons, with Boas/Pythons included. Just checked - no 'hunter' in my rep array.

Tried the shift-h thingy on a few of them the other night, and their primary role was pirate - but I'll check again next time.

Having removed Spicy Hermits last night, I ran a lucrative cross-chart contract, then cruised around some dodgy systems, looking for trouble. At all times, pirates behaved correctly and broke-off their attacks when I dropped the demanded cargo - even the heavy, high-accuracy, mob. I took barely a scratch in all encounters. This morning, I re-installed Spicy Hermits and the second bunch to jump me blew me away without mercy. It is by no means a certain test, but I now suspect SH is affecting the core pirates (no matter how unlikely that may be). I'll be on another cross-chart run tonight, I expect - which will probably prove me wrong. <grins wryly>

I don't see how spicy hermits could have something to do with it. The oxp does not touch the core pirate AI in any way. The only thing it does, is launching pirates from pirate hermits, awarding them injectors and adding them to the hermit group.

Does this happen in all systems? Only two most unstable gov types might have pirate hermits and if there's no pirate hermit, the oxp basically does nothing special. If there's a chaotic hermit around, it gets a couple of escorts. That's all.

I have a theory here. If this happens in systems with a pirate hermit and if longish time is spent in system, the hermit group grows in size so that AI condition "conditionGroupHasEnoughLoot" probably never triggers. Be this the root of the problem or not, I need to do something about it anyway.

Remember my first impression of Spicy Hermits? Meanwhile I've seen the code, and I can't imagine that there is a connection to Spicy Hermits, so it probably was a coincidence. But still, it seems to be a related phenomenon, something spawning new ships over and over again.

Btw, I never had the impression that the pirates have become better or significantly more than they used to be. The group around the hermit does grow, but this shouldn't affect the rest of the system, or the pirate AI.

_________________"You wouldn't kill me just for a few credits, would you?" – "No, I'll do it just for the fun!"